Prometheus, Viewed As A Roleplaying Game

GM RIDLEY SCOTT: So you’ve all been in cryosleep for two years now, on a mysterious mission to the stars. Your bodies lie in capsules, tended to by –

MICHAEL FASSBENDER: I’M A ROBOT!!!!!

SCOTT: What?

FASSBENDER: I’M A ROBOT OH BOY! I never need to sleep. I’m gonna spend the whole trip watching movies, and running around the ship, and playing X-Box… It’s so cool! Wait! Does the ship have a gym?

SCOTT: …I guess.

FASSBENDER: I’m gonna ride a bike and shoot hoops! Because I’M A ROBOT! How do I do when I shoot? Huh? Tell me how I did. I bet I did awesome!!!!!

SCOTT (rolls some dice): Sure. You get it through the net.

FASSBENDER: I do it again! Look at these stats on my character sheet! They’re through the roof! Being a robot is awesome. I bet you wish YOU guys were all robots…

CHARLIZE THERON (whispering to fellow player STRINGER BELL): Hey, am I a robot? I can never make sense of these character sheets.

SCOTT: Okay, yeah, Fassbender, you make a lot of hoops. Then the ship shudders to a stop and everyone wakes up. Your bodies cry out for nutrients…

STRINGER BELL: I smoke a cigar and set up a Christmas tree.

SCOTT: …what? This is an enclosed spaceship! Where the hell did you get a Christmas tree?

STRINGER BELL: Right on my inventory sheet. I come prepared. You’ll also see I have three freeze-dried Chihuahuas, a can of shark repellent, a case full of silly string, and a tin full of Mexican jumping beans in my left pocket.

SCOTT: Okay. You set up a Christmas tree.

FASSBENDER: I’M A ROBOT!

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SCOTT: So you all meet inside the gymnasium.

FASSBENDER: I SHOOT A HOOP!

SCOTT: No, you do not. You’ve never met these people before. Now you have to introduce yourself.

SCARY TATTOOED GUY FIFIELD: Wait a minute, we’ve never met each other? Weren’t we all in cryosleep on a multimillion dollar mission into space? Didn’t we at least have some kind of pre-ship meeting?

SCOTT: No.

FIFIELD: What, did they wheel us onto the ship in cryosleep?

FASSBENDER: I DID IT WITH MY ROBOT ARMS!

SCOTT: See? Mikey wheeled you all. That’s how it works. In space.

THERON: Christ, Ridley, it’s a roleplaying cliché if we all meet at the inn when the plot-coupon guy hands us an adventure… but at least that makes sense. As adventurers, we’d be drinking at the Inn. We didn’t take some techno-roofies and lay down in a vaccubed to be shanghaied seventy million lightyears into space, only THEN to be told what the fuck we’re up to.

SCOTT (grumbling): Like you girls know anything about roleplaying. Girls don’t do anything. They don’t even give birth in this campaign.

THERON: What?

SCOTT: Nothing. So you’re all at the Inn…. I mean the gym….

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MILLBURN: Whafuck, there are DEAD ALIENS here in the compound? That shit’s bad news. I’m leaving.

THERON (facepalming): Millburn, you’re a biologist. This is the first non-Earth biological structure you’ve ever laid eyes on. This should be your holy fucking grail. Why do you want to leave?

MILLBURN (waving character sheets): Look at this guy! I’ve got no combat stats at all! I’m toast in combat.

FIFIELD: Holy crap, you’re right. Who the hell gave me 90% skill level in – what the hell is geology?

SCOTT (facepalming): The study of rocks.

FIFIELD: Why the hell would anyone wanna look at pebbles? I wanted to bring weapons here! I’m all bad-ass! I have tattoos and a scraggly beard, and you’re telling me I’m not ju-jitsu expert, just the master of dirt?

MILLBURN: Yeah, screw this noise, let’s go back to the ship. I’m not gonna get myself killed.

SCOTT: Fine. You go back to the ship.

FIFIELD: So what’s happening there?

SCOTT: Nothing. It’s the ship. All the adventure’s over in the, you know, deeply alien complex I made this gigantic map of.

MILLBURN: You’re telling me there’s nothing to do back here?

FASSBENDER: YOU CAN SHOOT SOME AWESOME HOOPS!

MILLBURN: Shut UP, Mikey. All right, fine. We go back to the alien complex and wander around.

THERON (horrified): Do you… Want to tell anyone where you go? Radio in? So people know what happened to you after you left?

THERON: You know, I think this is what passes for character development in this game. Why not.

FASSBENDER: THIS SLIME IS SO COOL. What happens if I feed it to Holloway?

SCOTT: Wait a minute, you find the alien muck that you don’t know what it does, on the same ship with your ailing master who you’re programmed to protect at all costs, and you’re just going to… Feed it to someone? In the hopes of what?

FASSBENDER: I’m a ROBOT, man! I don’t think human!

HOLLOWAY: Wait a minute, I don’t want to eat alien slime.

FASSBENDER: LOOK AT THAT TWENTY GUYS I ROLLED A TWENTY ON MY CHARISMA CHECK! CRITICAL! EAT A BUG HOLLOWAY!

FIFIELD: GOD, this game’s boring. So they went back to the ship and didn’t tell us?

THERON: You didn’t tell us where you went!

FIFIELD: At least you’re having sex. If I’d known I could have had sex with you, I would have totally spammed that attack, if you get my drift.

MILLBURN: Okay, we found some more dead bodies, and there was some kind of blip over there, and so now what?

SCOTT: It’s an abandoned alien complex. It’s been dormant for two thousand years. There’s not that much to do.

MILLBURN: Fuck, man, throw us a bone. Make a roll on the wandering monster table or something!

SCOTT: Fine. Fine. You want random fucking monsters? Okay, a… A deadly alien snake rises from the muck. It looks like a cobra, flaring its hood at you and swaying back and forth.

MILLBURN: I POKE IT!

SCOTT: It eats you.

MILLBURN: Man, that is so UNFAIR.

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SCOTT: All right, Noomi, that was some pretty amazing work. You exit the autodoc, stomach stapled, alien extracted. I totally thought you were hosed.

NOOMI: I find Mikey. Fucking Mikey.

FASSBENDER: HI NOOMI! YOU’RE AWESOME! That was so cool, the whole “zip” and “snap” and “slurp” thing!

NOOMI: Now I’m going to kill you.

FASSBENDER: But why?

NOOMI: Because you just tried to kill me. By implanting an alien baby inside of me. I assume you’re either trying to destroy me personally, or are generating aliens as part of an elaborate biowarfare program.

FASSBENDER: …no.

NOOMI: No?

FASSBENDER: I just wanted to see what would happen. Dude, it’s cool, you’re alive, I’m alive, now let’s go meet a alien! I found a frozen one.